Blue skies meet mountain peaks in Glacier National Park, Mt. (aphid00 / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/aphid00/ / CC BY 2.0
A powerful blizzard is landing a roundhouse punch to the east coast, and with a lot of us stuck in our cozy homes, I thought I’d give us all something to ponder.
I woke early this morning and read an Oxford American article by Bronwen Dickey included in the 2009 Best American Travel Writing Series. If that last name, Dickey, seems familiar, it should because Bronwen’s father, James Dickey, penned the 1970 freak-you-out novel Deliverance.
The younger Dickey set out to explore the Chattooga River in northern Georgia, the inspiration of her father’s novel and currently in the vice grip of history between those who want to preserve the headwaters as it is and those who want to open it to boating. The U.S. Forest Service manages the snaking 57-mile Chattooga, and its upper headwaters remains off-limits to boaters, although there’s ongoing litigation and management studies which could change that status.
Dickey wrote a passage I thought relevant to our ongoing discussion about what’s wild about America anymore. She said her father, James, drew a distinction between “wilderness” and “wildness”:
Wilderness, to him, was just an idea, a romantic falsification of nature rather than the untamed, untamable thing itself. Wildness was a place where man risked everything; it wasn’t a theme park or a toy you played around with or a place you ventured into for thrills. It could kill you. The characters in Deliverance were prepared only for wilderness, and they found wildness. Wildness bites back.
Something to ponder while we’re snowed in today.
Initially, I find myself disagreeing with how Dickey defines the difference between wilderness and wildness. “Wilderness” is a place, not an abstract idea, while “wildness” is something inherent in a place or a person or an animal. Wilderness can be visited, walked or paddled or climbed, photographed by Ansel Adams and protected by people and their institutions.
“Wildness,” to me, cannot be controlled; “wildness” is like a violent winter storm on top of Mount Washington or the viciousness with which a mother bear protects her cubs. Wilderness has wildness, and it’s wildness that can hurt or kill you.
Dickey left another thought to ponder, relevant to our national debate about preservation, conservation or the pillaging of natural resources to satisfy the high demands of the present. Talking to guidebook author Butch Clay, Dickey quotes Clay as saying: “Everyone is asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ No one is saying, ‘What can I give up?’ “
